Within the game's data are unused graphics for a an ability that would see Kirby shrink down to a small size. Because of their placement in the game's data, it's speculated that this ability was replaced by the UFO power.

At one point, the W Emblem was going to be purple. This would imply that when Mario equips the W Emblem, it was originally going to make Mario’s clothes transform into Waluigi’s clothes, as opposed to this happening by equipping the L and W Emblems in the final game.

All 12 playable characters have dialogue in the game that goes completely unused. The audio references an object that's referred to as an Omochao-themed gate. This gate would've been opened via the use of a nearby Omochao. However, no such "Omochao Gate" appears anywhere in the game, and Omochao himself does not physically appear in any level of the game either.

The game was originally to be titled Beyond instead of Anthem. The reason for this previous name was because of what the developers would hope the game would be about, going beyond the walls of your fort into the dangerous wilds. T-shirts were even printed with "Beyond" on them for the staff. However, less than a week before the game's public reveal at E3 in June of 2017, it was decided to use their back-up name for the game, Anthem, after they were told that securing the trademark for Beyond would be too difficult.

The game's developers weren't as enthusiastic about the new title with everyone stating "‘Well, that doesn’t make any sense—what does this have to do with anything?’"

During development, the game was given the codename "Dylan", in reference to the singer Bob Dylan. The reason for this was because they wanted the project to be the "Bob Dylan of video games", something that gamers would be referencing for years after.

In a 2018 interview with Kotaru Hayashida, it was revealed that the Alex Kidd franchise was originally envisioned as an adaptation of the popular 1984 manga Dragon Ball. However, because Sega lost the license to the comic partway through development, they had to refocus the first game into an original IP. Among other changes, Goku was redesigned into a lookalike of his inspiration, Chinese literary character Sun Wukong, and his Nyoi-Bo staff attack was replaced with a simple punch.

In an Sega.jp Meisaku interview with game's creator Kotaru Hayashida (aka Ossale Kohta), he was asked why did he wanted to use jan-ken-pon (rock–paper–scissors) in boss fights. And he responded:

"That was also one of our concepts to differentiate our game from Mario. It a very fanciful, absurd idea. There were various reactions, like “What the hell! Isn’t this supposed to be an action game?!” or “I lost the rock-paper-scissors match and its Game over!? This sucks.” Definitely, for people who are good at action games to lose everything and Game Over because of a rock paper scissors match… yeah, that sucks.

The staff at Sega shared these concerns, but I wanted to know how players would react to it, so I left it in."

Originally the development team consider using Bowser's car from Super Mario 3D World for Mario to drive around in the Super Mario 3D World style, but they instead decided to go with the Koopa Troopa car because of how difficult it would've been to replicate Bowser's car in Super Mario Maker 2.

In an Sega.jp Meisaku interview with game's creator Kotaru Hayashida (aka Ossale Kohta), he stated that the 'Octopus Sushi' was originally going to have at least 8 arms. But it was impossible, due to an issue with the sprites.

In February 2015, Warner Bros was given a small window of permission from Todd McFarlane to use Spawn in its games. However, Ed Boon was unaware of the offer two months later, despite revealing that Spawn was discussed as a potential guest character. Spawn would later be added in Mortal Kombat 11.

Several changes were made to the game during its development: the game's box art was altered, the game's title changed from Cabaret Gals to Girls RPG: Cinderella Life, hostesses being changed to “Neosiennes”, the character’s underlying goal changed to finding a legendary lucky butterfly at the castle instead of being the best hostess, and the game's marketed sale price from 5,400 yen to 4,980 yen.

Though undisclosed, it's assumed that these changes were done so try and disassociate itself from the fact that the game is about being a hostess, which is deemed as not being one of the most dignified professions in Japan.

At one point in development, it was planned for the Working Joe enemy to quote lines from William Shakespeare in a malevolent manner. However, it was ultimately decided it didn't fit with the tone of the game and the few recorded lines were cut from the game.

In an interview, game's art director Hidenobu Takahashi stated that the title of the game came from a Formula One race car.

"To us it means a variety of specialists coming together to challenge themselves with a new design. How can we create something amazing? That’s the single question we ask when we’re developing a game, and we’ll work ourselves to the bone to answer it. It’s the same as an F1 team, where they get specialists from all different fields together to build the fastest car. We’re in the final stages of our work here, so please look forward to Grandia soon!."